Politics prof reflects on Sona
VICTORY PARK – Time will tell if Ramaphosa's 2020 promises will ever become a reality.
President Cyril Ramaphosa delivered his 2020 State of the Nation Address on the evening of 13 February in Cape Town.
Many have been analysing what he has promised and among them is St Augustine College of South Africa’s politics lecturer Professor Philip Frankel. He expressed what he was hoping Sona would achieve, “Conducted by the President, it should ideally be a non-partisan exercise highlighting government policy in the previous calendar year, failures included.”
With the economy struggling, state-owned enterprises failing, the incapacity of local government on service-delivery, unemployment, problems in basic education and skills-building programmes, as well as the role of public-private sector partnerships where all things South Africans have been waiting to hear solutions on. “Following an imbongi (praise-singer) and an energetic filibuster by the EFF designed to delay ‘the business at hand’, the President delivered a sombre, eloquent and frequently humorous speech.”
Frankel believes that the words spoken by the president effectively addressed many of the issues that are of growing concern for all South Africans. He was also intrigued to hear how Ramaphosa plans to deal with what he calls the ‘two alternative realities’ of the country. “On the one hand, he spoke of lack of economic growth over the last decade, the distress of state-owned enterprises, rising costs, unemployment and what he termed the ‘tragedy’ of the South African energy sector. But on the other he referred to the 2.4 million children in early childhood education, the 4.2 million South Africans whose HIV status is now under control, the deep capital base of the country and its robust constitution.”
In the speech, Ramaphosa committed himself to reduce government spending, poverty, inequality and gender-based violence but the power crisis is here to stay. “Load-shedding would regrettably continue for the next 18 months but measures were already in place to reduce energy disruption as part of a wider project to promote climate ‘justice’ through the introduction of new low-carbon measures based on renewable energy sources.”
For Frankel, just like all other South Africans, only time will tell if the nation will improve. He concluded, “Whether this all adds up to the ‘social compacts’ to which the President alluded frequently remains to be seen. ‘Freedom’ to quote Mandela ‘is not yet at hand’ but we have, he says, ‘unbounded’ potential.”
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